Data is a Product

 Fair warning to you straight away. This could become a bit of a rant. Also, I'll try to avoid singling out any particular vendors and their marketing campaigns and likewise any economies that are currently extracting fossil fuels. This isn't personal, it's just a point of view on how the data industry has failed to create a clear enough message around the benefits of data and thus failed all of us. When did data become oil? I can't remember exactly when I first heard the term "data is the new oil" but my memory vaguely places it amongst other marketing zingers like "data is a goldmine" (which was ironic to me at the time as I was responsible for an instance of the CRM system called Goldmine, but that's another story). We're talking between 2004 and 2010 here.. So around the time that cloud computing was kicking off and the big SaaS CRM revolution that came with it. Big Data was to emerge towards the back end of that time period. So now we kn...

Happy New Year! 2017 is well underway and as things in Politics and Society continue to go in uncertain directions, data is perhaps one area that can be more certain: More data (open, shared & closed) More hacks & security issues More awareness of the law More challenges to fact based decision making Hopefully a focus on schemas & infrastructure Instead of regurgitating my views from an earlier article , check out my thoughts given to Data IQ (note: this was done as part of my day job). I'd also recommend a look at these Open Data predictions from the Guardian . Have a great 2017!

Well 2013 is over and 2014 is upon us. What does it mean? What are the trends going to be this year? I'm not going to join in that game but I am going to spend a little time talking about something that's been on my mind for a while, namely Data Visualisation. This is the term used to describe graphics that communicate facts and figures. These are used by a variety of "data people" from finance departments to marketing managers, journalists and beyond. This article will look at a few of the common tools and good examples to see how data visualisation is being used to change the way data is used to bring value to businesses and people. A wordle of this blog

I know it's been a while since my last post. Don't worry! I haven't gone anywhere. I've just been busy with my day job and then relaxing for a couple of weeks after a manic product launch. While I get a new post written, take a look at what I've been up to at PublicTechnology.net .

A while ago, I wrote a post about how our use of social media can be advantageous in finding us special deals, helping us contact friends and find new jobs. In this post, I wanted to look at the other side of the coin. Namely, what do the companies offering us these free services and special deals get out of it? To start, let's look at one of the obvious and less technical uses of data products: Grocery Shopping! Shopping While this may seem rather simplistic, the use of shopping data linked to a loyalty card has been the clearest example of the power of data in creating strong product propositions. While many will talk about the potential of Facebook and Twitter (I'll come onto this in the future); the loyalty card has proven to be the best promotional tool available. So, we know that our shopping habits are collected when we use our Clubcard (Tesco), Advantage card (Boots) or our Costa Coffee card. The shopping habits of consumers have been tracked by supermarkets sin...

Much like one of Santa’s Elves I’ve been working hard to bring you the latest data blog - not so much Product this time, but certainly data! All wrapped up in a pretty bow. Now, before we all get stuck into Sprouts and Turkey on the 25 th (I’ll be avoiding that one this year by taking extreme measures – leaving the Country!) I wanted to somehow combine the themes of Christmas and Data. What I’ve come up with is of course something akin to Good King Wenceslas combined with the Dr Who Special. To start with we’ll look at Christmas cards. David Cameron (aka Santa) has been busily sending cards to his nearest and dearest. Included on his list this year are the President of Kyrgyzstan, the Prime Minister of Chile and of course, the Pope. The Guardian have a great article about the full list and who’s made Dave’s ‘Naughty’ list (we’re looking at you South Africa). Next up, Christmas Presents. I’ve found some nice data on US Christmas Shopping habits from last year. Did ...

Firstly, thanks to Duncan Ross for inspiring this post (@duncan3ross) about how organisations are using 'Free' products to get data they can monetise for profit. I'll be looking at this from both sides of the fence. In this post, we'll tackle what you, the consumer gets from these 'Free' products. This way of providing products and services is often called the 'Freemium' model and is one that has become very popular over the last couple of years. Anyone with a smartphone will probably have some free software in the form of apps featuring enraged feathered creatures or links to your favourite social network. You'll often see adverts pop up in these apps and games which is obviously a way for the developers to make money. However, how do they know which advert is going to appeal most to you? We'll cover this piece in more detail in the next post. Let's look first at what you get.

Last night, I watched the excellent documentary on BBC 2 about the growth of Facebook and how they use the data created by users to make money. If you didn't catch it, have a look on the iPlayer for Inside Facebook. So, Facebook take your data and use it to do several things. Firstly, they use your friends, links between them and your interests to suggest new friends to you. Very helpful! This often means that you end up with about 200 people in your network who can see what you do or like and vice-versa. That's actually quite helpful and is probably why you joined.. to communicate! Next up, you Like various company pages, band pages and so on. Again, your friends can see this. More importantly, Facebook can see what you Like, who your friends are and the basic details about you. For example, you are Male, live in London, went to school in Cambridge and are currently single. This then allows Facebook to sell you adverts based upon your details. It also allows the compan...

Hello there! Welcome to my first Blogger post about Data and the important role it plays in Products. I'm a Product Manager for a successful software house in London focussing on address, location and contact data tools. What I'd like to do here is pretty simple: 1. Talk about my experiences of Product Management 2. Highlight the value of good quality Data to your Products 3. Share stories on how data and products combine to help people and organisations Obviously, it's important to start by saying that any views contained in this blog do not represent those of my employer so please don't make any assumptions! So, why is Data a Product? It's something that I'm constantly striving to define to people who focus on the software that they see and use. For example, when you use a mapping service like Google Maps on your phone, you're focussing on the user interface, speed of lookup and quality of result. All of this is surely down to clever software dev...